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Wednesday, 14 November 2012

In the previous post, we brought news about Helen MacEwan's recently published book on the story of the Brussels Brontë Group. See post of 10 november.

There will be a special book launch in Waterstones
at 18.30 on Wednesday 28 November.Helen will tell more about the inside story of how our group came to be, the significance of the Brontës' time in Brussels, and she will introduce the people who set the group up and those who have contributed to it since then.Drop by if you can and get your copy then.

The book has over 40 illustrations in
colour. It is now available in Waterstones and Sterling Books in Brussels (price
€17.50) and can also be ordered from the Brontë Parsonage bookshop in Haworth
(price ₤13.99).Wednesday
28 November 2012 at 18.30 at Waterstone’s bookstore, Boulevard Adolphe Max 71,
1000 Brussels

Saturday, 10 November 2012

A project
I’ve been working on for some time, a book about the genesis and development of
the Brussels Brontë Group (which started up in 2006) is finally completed; it
has now been printed and copies are available. You can buy it in the English
bookstores Waterstones and Sterling Books in Brussels, or from the Brontë
Parsonage Museum shop. Go to Brontë Shop – Books –
Miscellaneous.

In the course
of writing it I interviewed and spoke to many people in the group, and the book
is about their discovery of the Brontës in Brussels as well as mine. So it’s
something of a group project.

The book is
called Down the Belliard Steps: Discovering the
Brontës in Brussels

Description of the book:

Charlotte and
Emily Brontë’s stay in Brussels in 1842-43 to improve their French was to prove
a momentous one for Charlotte in particular. She fell in love with her French
teacher, Constantin Heger, and her experiences in the Belgian capital inspired
two of her four novels, Villette and The Professor. Yet the Brontës’ Brussels
episode remains the least-known of their lives.

When Helen MacEwan moved to Brussels in 2004 she
discovered that not many people there seemed to know much about the Brontës’
time in the city. She herself had a lot to find out about their life in the
Pensionnat Heger at the bottom of the Belliard steps. In the process of doing so
she met other people who were similarly fascinated by the story, and with them
formed the Brussels branch of the Brontë Society.

Photo: Cassandre Sturbois

For all these
people, following in Charlotte and Emily's tracks in modern-day Brussels, and
setting up a literary group, was a voyage of discovery. In the course of telling
their story, Helen finds some odd parallels between the Brussels of their day
and ours, and reflects on why the Brontës' time there is so
fascinating.